Captain a washed-up space cruiser in cartoon management game Cosmo-Nautica

“You are the captain of a small washed-up space cruiser,” write developer Chasing Carrots. “Assemble a well functioning crew and build a flourishing space company. Success and failure depend on your decisions.”

A neat idea. The way it works is that your ship runs (barely) and you need to make money trading goods to repair it, improve it, and hire new crew members to man it. Each of the crew members have personality traits that could get on the nerves of a monk on diazepam so keeping everyone happy is going to be a challenge.

Getting in the way of your micromanagement are pirate attacks, alien worlds, and missions from high command. Each of them can see crew members killed off, sent mad, or, at least, drive them to a nervous breakdown.

It’s not all about the crew, though. The game allows you to plan out the placement of rooms on your ship and how each of them are equipped. This will come into play when your ship is boarded. Which it will be. Space pirates love boarding parties.

Cosmo-Nautica is currently in closed alpha but hopefully we’ll soon have news of how you can get involved.